Human Rights and Wrongs

Helen Fein is Director of the Institute for the Study of Genocide in New York and an Associate of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She is the author of two award-winning books: Accounting for Genocide (Free Press 1979), winner of the Sorokin Award of the ASA, and Genocide: A Sociological Perspective (Sage 1991, 1993), winner of the first PIOOM award in Amsterdam.

“Human Rights and Wrongs is a magnificent book: lucid, insightful, nuanced, and encompassing. I know of no other work that deals with all of the major threats to human rights: slavery, terror, and genocide. Moreover, its discussion of the place of democracy in fostering and preserving human rights is original, chastening, yet encouraging. Fein’s book will be a classic in social science, standing in the company of Barrington Moore’s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy and Robert Putnam’s Making Democracy Work.” —Roger W. Smith, College of William and Mary, and past president, International Association of Genocide scholars. “Helen Fein has long been one of the world’s leading experts on genocide and state-sponsored massacres. In her superb new book she returns to that subject but also delves into other atrocities—terror, torture, and slavery—that have been perpetrated by states and by non-state actors alike. The subject is unremittingly grim, but her eloquent discussion and shrewd insights help readers to understand why these appalling forms of human cruelty have occurred so frequently and why bringing an end to them has been so difficult.” —Mark Kramer, Director of Cold War Studies, Harvard University

• List of Acronyms, Preface and Acknowledgments, 1 Distinguishing among Human Rights and Wrongs, 2 Twentieth-Century Slavery within the State, 3 Slavery, Trafficking, and Globalization, 4 States of Terror in the Late Twentieth Century: Algeria and Argentina, 5 States of Terror Turn to Genocide: Guatemala and Iraq, 6 States of Genocide, Genocidal Massacres, and Ethnic Cleansing, 7 No Brave New World: Democracy and Human Rights, 8 Human Rights, Freedom, and Development, 9 Conclusion and Implications: What Can Be Done?, Bibliography, Index, About the Author